A26947:8
A key for Catholics, to open the juggling of the Jesuits, and satisfy all…A key for Catholicks, to open the jugling of the Jesuits, and satisfie all…
A key for Catholics, to open the juggling of the Jesuits, and satisfy all that are but truly willing to understand, whether the cause of the Roman or reformed churches be of God ... containing some arguments by which the meanest may see the vanity of popery, and 40 detections of their fraud, with directions, and materials sufficient for the confutation of their voluminous deceits ... : the second part showeth (especially against the French and Grotians) that the Catholic Church is not united in any merely humane head, either Pope or council / by Richard Baxter, a Catholic Christian and Pastor of a church ...A key for Catholicks, to open the jugling of the Jesuits, and satisfie all that are but truly willing to understand, whether the cause of the Roman or reformed churches be of God ... containing some arguments by which the meanest may see the vanity of popery, and 40 detections of their fraud, with directions, and materials sufficient for the confutation of their voluminous deceits ... : the second part sheweth (especially against the French and Grotians) that the Catholick Church is not united in any meerly humane head, either Pope or council / by Richard Baxter, a Catholick Christian and Pastor of a church ...
London: printed by R.W. for Nevil Simmons, 1659
Dedication: To his Highness RICHARD Lord Protector OF THE Common-wealth of England, Scotland and Ir…
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
To his Highness RICHARD Lord Protector OF THE Common-wealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, &c.
SIR,
These Papers presume to tender you their service, because the Subject of them is such, as it most nearly concerneth both us and you that you be well acquainted with. The Roman Canons that batter the Unity, Catholicism and Purity of the Church of Christ, are mounted on the frame which I have here demolished. The swords, and pens, and ⟨image 3⟩tongues that you are now engaged against, and which you must expect from henceforth to assault you, are whetted and managed by the senseless, tyrannous, ungodly principles, which I have here Detected. As unreasonable as they appear to the unprejudiced, they are such as have animated the studies and diligent endeavours of thousands to captivate the Princes and Nations of the Earth to the Roman yoke. As vain as they appear to us that see them naked, they are such as have divided and distracted the Churches of Christ, and troubled and dethroned Princes, and laid them at the feet of the Roman Pope; They have absolved subjects from their Oaths and other obligations to fidelity: They have involved many a Nation in blood: O the streams of the blood of Saints that have been shed by these Roman Principles, in Savoy, France, Bohemia, Poland, Germany, Ireland, England, and many other Lands! As easy a war as here I manage, it is against those adverse Principles that have armed Thousands and Millions against the innocent, or against their lawful Sovereigns, whom God had bound them to obey: They have fastened knives in the breasts of the greatest Kings, as the lamentable case of Henry the third and fourth of France doth testify: They have in a few days time in Paris, and the adjoining parts of France, perfidiously butchered Nobles and other persons of eminency, and people of all sorts, to the number of near thirty thousand (as Thuanus reckoneth them, if not forty thousand, as Davilah.) The Doctrines which I here confound, have invaded England by a Spanish Armada, (whether by the Popes consent, and upon the account of Religion, I have after showed out of their own Writers:) they have prepared knives and poison for our Princes, which God